L&M Arc NiMH Battery Finally Died, DIY Li Replacement?

My first good light, bought in 2007. Stopped working nights and battery sat for a couple years. I was able to bring it back to life after a few charge/discharge cycles, lasting up to 2.5 hours for a couple weeks.

Then it started degrading and this morning it didn't even last but 45 minutes.

I ordered a Gloworm X2 from Action LED Lights today after researching all last week. I just hope I will not be disappointed with the beam pattern as I thought the L&M Arc pattern was most brilliant.

I like the L&M so much, and would hate to just toss it. I have at least 100 hours on it that I have recorded, probably a lot more. Never had to replace bulb.___

I want to put it to use at least until the bulb goes out. When I bought this light they also had a Li-Ion battery, but for $100 more. They told me the charger and light head I bought with NiMH battery would work with Li-Ion.

I had read that some people use R/C LiPo packs with their LED light heads. I understand the differences with Li-Ion. I do already have a quality LiPo charger and lots of old LiPo 2s packs.

I hadn't seen anything about using LiPo with HID lights though. Since L&M sold the light head as compatible with NiMH and Li-Ion I'm guessing its low-voltage cutoff is suitable for Lithium batteries.

So, I'm thinking I'll just clip the cable plug off my L&M light head, solder a connector to mate with my LiPo packs and try that until the bulb or ballast gives out.

As f-b states above, you are going to need 3S li-poly or li-ion batteries. You are better off getting the low voltage cut off with a protection board built into your new pack. You'll get overcharge and short circuit protection as well.

Your old L&M nimh charger will NOT properly nor safely charge a lithium chemistry pack unless it has some kind of mode changing ability like most hobby chargers have.

Thanks for pointing that out to me, looks like I will have to lay out some more money.

I looked and my L&M charger does say multi-chemistry for their NiMH and Li-Ion batteries.
I got out the instructions for my hobby charger and it only says for LiPo and LiFe cells.
I will also have my new Gloworm charger.

Here's my next idea:
I'm thinking about buying a $50 11.1V 5200mAh pack with Samsung cells. It has bare leads, if I can take the NiMH pack apart and salvage the connector I can solder the leads to it and not have to cut the light head cable.

So, my question now is shouldn't I be able to safely charge a generic Li-Ion pack with my old L&M multi-chemistry charger that says for their NiMH and Li-Ion packs only?

This battery pack I found on all-battery.com and has low/high charge protection.

Thanks.

The link given does have me wondering if my new light will live up to the L&M Arc. Hopefully spending 2x on the X2 will make me smile. Action LED Lights did send it out on the same day and since Jim borders my state it should be delivered tomorrow!

I looked and my L&M charger does say multi-chemistry for their NiMH and Li-Ion batteries.....

So, my question now is shouldn't I be able to safely charge a generic Li-Ion pack with my old L&M multi-chemistry charger that says for their NiMH and Li-Ion packs only?

Fair chance it will work OK then.

I had an instance where a protection board and a charger did not get along too well. The charge cutoff voltage of the charger was so close to the charge cutoff of the protection board that sometimes the protection board would cut off the charge before the charger. The charger then never indicated a full charge by it's led indicator. The battery was fully charged, you just did not get an indication. Next time around the charger would stop the charge before the board and everything was good too. Only a minor annoyance. Just learned that if the battery charged for more than 4 hours and the light was still red it was still fully charged and ready to use.

Thanks for pointing that out to me, looks like I will have to lay out some more money.

I looked and my L&M charger does say multi-chemistry for their NiMH and Li-Ion batteries.
I got out the instructions for my hobby charger and it only says for LiPo and LiFe cells.
I will also have my new Gloworm charger.

Here's my next idea:
I'm thinking about buying a $50 11.1V 5200mAh pack with Samsung cells. It has bare leads, if I can take the NiMH pack apart and salvage the connector I can solder the leads to it and not have to cut the light head cable.

So, my question now is shouldn't I be able to safely charge a generic Li-Ion pack with my old L&M multi-chemistry charger that says for their NiMH and Li-Ion packs only?

This battery pack I found on all-battery.com and has low/high charge protection.

Thanks.

The link given does have me wondering if my new light will live up to the L&M Arc. Hopefully spending 2x on the X2 will make me smile. Action LED Lights did send it out on the same day and since Jim borders my state it should be delivered tomorrow!

So did this work? What was the final solution to make the Arc happy again?